


Muse

by madame_faust



Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2020-07-25 16:54:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20029162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madame_faust/pseuds/madame_faust
Summary: Special-effects make-up artist Christine Daaé finds herself intrigued - scratch that - obsessed with one of the actors on the set of the movie she's working on. Two problems: She doesn't know his name and she's never seen him out of make-up.





	Muse

Christine Daaé had an eye for detail. She was never one to step back from her work with a shrug and a muttered, "They'll touch it up in post." No disrespect to the VFX department, but there was something to be said for _real_ actors in _real_ costumes. She took pride in her work, wanted to conjure up a sense of the uncanny, rather than Uncanny Valley. And, in her opinion, she did a damn good job.

Though at twenty-five, she didn't have a design role on this movie; she was a grunt, applying fake facial hair and wigs for the most part. It was a big-budget musical extravaganza and there were much more impressive names in the business on the payroll. One might question why there was a passel of special effects artists had been hired as well, but the next three-day block on the production schedule explained it: LEPER SCENES.

Most of the film was being shot on-location in Egypt, but the LEPER SCENES had to be done in the studio so the actors didn't sweat off all their make-up. This was when she was in her glory, applying scabs that oozed pus and she packed extra mints in her bag because she had to lean in awfully close to the actors' faces as she carved deep hollows into their cheeks and under their eyes. She was grateful for the A/C in the make-up trailer; the weather in LA was just as hot as it had been in the desert and even with the artificially cool air she kept having to push her glasses back up the sweaty bridge of her nose. 

She was making her way down to the set, armed with air brushes and sponges for between-take touch-ups, when she saw him. LEAD LEPER. 

It was the most magnificent make-up job she'd ever seen. Hollow eyes that looked almost empty in profile. An aborted bridge from a nose that had been eaten away over black and rotting lips. The lips themselves were pulled up (presumably with skin glue) in a sneer through which she could see cracked and yellow teeth. The actor was insanely tall, 6'6, 6'7 _easy_ and looked like he weighed about half as much as she did. Draped as he was in rags and flanked by the upper-tier make-up staff, Christine had to do a double-take to make sure they were escorting a _man_ and not a cunningly wired marionette.

_See my eyes, I can hardly see._  
_See me stand I can hardly walk._  
_I believe you can make me whole._  
_See my tongue, I can hardly talk._

Day One was just shooting the lepers as a crowd and individual close-ups. Christine couldn't stop staring at him - Lead Leper - especially when his humanity was confirmed during a break where he sat down to have his make-up touched up and sipped some ice coffee through a straw at the side of his mouth to keep from ruining the lip effect.

_See my skin, I'm a mess of blood._  
_See my legs, I can hardly stand._  
_I believe you can make me well._  
_See my purse, I'm a poor, poor man._

Day Two she was actively distracted by him and hardly found herself able to concentrate on her own work touching up the other actors' faces. The way he moved on-set was unreal. He had to be double-jointed, with the way he could long limbs into painful-looking shapes and there was a Lugosi-like curl to his fingers as he reached toward the actor playing Jesus (who didn't seem to have any trouble portraying his disgust at the crowd around him and actively edged away from the Lead Leper, even between takes).

_Will you touch, will you heal me, Christ?_  
_Won't you kiss, won't you cure me, Christ?_

She didn't sleep that night, she stayed up in the tiny room in the hostel she was staying in during production, sketching. With a frame like that, _oh_, the possibilities. A blank canvas, you could layer _anything_ onto an actor that long and lean and have it look natural. Obviously his face took prosthetics _extremely_ well. She dreamed of having him sit for her, of taking a plaster cast of his head, so she could use him as a model into perpetuity. 

There were two problems with realizing this dream: Number One, she didn't exactly have a lot of disposable income, so Lead Leper would have to have a strong affinity for charity cases (or a sweet tooth, she was known for paying models in baked goods when money was _really_ tight). And Number Two, she didn't know what his name was. Not being on the crew assigned to his make-up and wardrobe, she didn't know anything about him, not his name, not the agency he was booked through, not his contact information, nothing. 

He wasn't given to socializing. Being in a make-up that extreme was uncomfortable and she didn't blame him for wanting to scurry off to his trailer as fast as possible to take it all off - no doubt whatever was producing that nose effect was painful in the extreme. She wondered if they had gone the Lon Chaney hooks approach, but was never close enough to him to examine it in detail. 

Day Three she actively stalked him. Tried to snag him while the DP adjusted the lighting levels, but he was effectively surrounded by the senior-most make-up crew and every time she sneaked near enough to jump in on a conversation, she was needed elsewhere. He disappeared when they broke for lunch, and then she heard something that made her heart sink. 

"Thanks, Erik, I think we're good, you've got the afternoon off."

He had the afternoon off. He was leaving. She'd lost her chance. 

But she'd learned his _name_. Erik. Or, Eric? Nope, _Erik._ With a K. Erik Jobert.

Christine discovered this as she walked up and down the rows of trailers outside the set, breezing past the leads' and directors' trailers until she found one on the outskirts, tiny and tucked away, a long walk from the set.

Was she supposed to be here? No. Was she supposed to be on-set? Yes. Could she get in trouble for deserting after lunch? Possibly, but the consequences were well worth the reward. If she managed to get this guy to agree to model for her, she could expand her portfolio and get hired as a designer, maybe, soon, instead of a grunt with an airbrush. It was worth a shot, anyway. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?

Boldly, Christine stepped up to the trailer door, her knock a loud metallic clang. "Hi. Um. Mr..." _Joe-BERT? Joe-BEAR? Probably Joe-BEAR, it sounds fancier._ "Um. Mr. Jobert?"

No response. 

Christine squinted past the reflected image of her face in the window of the door (_round face, round body, too round to be an actress, Rebel Wilson's got the market cornered with the chubby-girl-who-sings-thing, you'd be cute if you lost weight, hey, but your art is good, maybe do something with that_). One did not become a Hollywood Hopeful through a lack of determination. Or, you know, a penchant for committing minor crimes in the name of career advancement.

She took hold of the handle of the door and pressed her thumb down on the latch. It opened easily. 

What started as a determination to just stick her head inside and looked for signs of life quickly devolved. First she inserted her head into the door. Her head was quickly followed by her shoulders (she was short, okay, how was she supposed to actually see inside if she didn't stretch a little?). Then she put one foot on the stairs leading into the trailer. Then her second foot and before she knew it she was standing inside and the door shut with a clang behind her. 

Christine glanced around. The couch was unoccupied, the table similarly empty of anything other than a laptop, a phone, and a wireless charging port. There were a pair of clown-sized Converse abandoned at her own feet. And directly in front of her, she could hear water running.

At once she colored, both in embarrassment, (_He's in the shower!_) and excitement, (_He's in the shower! He's here! You just have to wait him out!_)

Not being a complete creep, Christine was determined to leave the trailer itself and wait outside to pounce the second Erik Jobert left his trailer, but then she heard singing.

At first she thought he had taken waterproof speakers into the tiny bathroom (and he was so tall she wondered how the hell he was even managing a shower in the first place), but the songs kept changing up and the voice remained the same. 

_I only want to say_  
_If there is a way_  
_Take this cup away from me_  
_For I don't want to taste its poison_  
_Feel it burn me_  
_I have changed_  
_I'm not as sure as when we started..._

He had a really great voice. Better, she felt privately, than their lead actor who had been chosen more for box office draw than singing chops (no disrespect to the audio technicians, but 'We can clean it up in post,' probably shouldn't be your go-to response when casting a musical.) Even muffled as it was by the door and the water.

She meant to leave. She really did. But she was so caught up listening to him sing that she neglected to scurry out when the water stopped running. And it was too late to run when the door handle on the bathroom turned. 

They both screamed. He, obviously, because there was a strange girl standing outside his bathroom door. Her, because she wasn't expecting him to _still_ be wearing his Lead Leper make-up and prosthetics.

He'd removed his wig cap and curly black hair lay limply matted down around his ears, dripping water down his long scrawny neck, his deeply carved collar bones and his bony chest. There was a towel around his waist (thank _God_) which he was holding tightly closed with one long-fingered cadaverous hand. 

_Oh, God_. The towel. The shower. The wet hair. She'd been right about one thing; he wanted to scrub the make-up off as soon as was possible. She'd been wrong about everything else. Did she consider herself a professional make-up artist? Had she really felt privately cocky that she knew how they'd done the trick with his nose?

He wasn't still wearing his prosthetics. He hadn't been wearing any facial prosthetics. The sores and the grime had been washed away, but the hollow cheekbones, the deep-set eyes, the cavernous hole in the middle of his face? All his. All...natural.

_Oh, God._

Erik recovered himself first.

"Can I help you?" he asked, looking at her warily up and down. He noted her production badge and ventured, "Do they need me back on the set?"

Christine removed the hand that had clamped itself over her mouth in shock. Mutely, she shook her head.

_Perfect. He is beyond perfect._

"Hi, um, no, I mean, I don't think so," she babbled, sticking the hand she'd used to cover her mouth out for a professional hand-shake. "Let me start again. Hi. My name is Christine Daaé. I'm a make-up artist. And I was wondering if you'd like to model for me."

**Author's Note:**

> This was directly inspired by Javier Botet's make-up in _It_ (don't Google that if you're squeamish) as well as my love for both Javier Botet and Doug Jones, two of my favorite movie monster actors!


End file.
